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What Linux Distribution Would Be Best Fitted for a New HP 700-214 Desktop?

This computer has a 2.2 TiB hard drive with 12GB of RAM. I also have another 500 GB drive ready to install in that new machine. The large drive is GPT, however, I have not formatted the smaller one. Which distribution would be best fitted to install on that second drive? Also, what problems might I run into installing Grub on the large drive?

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It depends what you want to do...
If it is something general purpose
you can install Centos or Oracle enterprise Linux.
Both of them are free for Non commercial use and I have installed them a
number of times with no issues.

It appears that Centos is the most recommended distribution. At the moment, this 700-214 only has the one hard drive. I have another 500gb drive I intend on installing real soon now. My main concern is that I do not wish to muddy up the Windows 8.1 partition/boot process, but, I'm not sure how to install Linux on that second drive and not mess up the GPT partitions on the 2.2 TB drive. Would I need to obtain a uEFI "friendly" distribution --- just to allow GRUB to be installed? Or, and, along with this -- can GRUB be installed on the second drive and give me the option to boot either Windows or Linux? By the way, I have the Secure Boot options turned OFF in BIOS so that I can boot other disks/USB drives.

Thank you for the quick replies, folks! I really appreciate your feedback!

r> So...You can have two drives one for Windows and second for Linux
r> You shut down the computer ...pop in the disk drive and startup the
r> computer...

That's always an option but suspect it would be complicating matters
for the users Debra has in mind, and you have the problem of how to
safely store the drive that's currently not in use - popping it into a
drawer under the computer desk isn't going to be conducive to a long
life !!

The EZ Dock solution sounds very plausible, however, I'm thinking that since I have that "extra" 500GB drive, I can use it for both Linux and a backup medium for Windows 8.1. (Since this is tax season, I've not had the time to try out Barry Morgan's solution - "let time have its perfect time".)

Centos is fine for commercial use - the license is here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
- Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose,
even commercially.

b> My main concern is that I do not wish to muddy up the Windows 8.1
b> partition/boot process, but, I'm not sure how to install Linux on
b> that second drive and not mess up the GPT partitions on the 2.2 TB
b> drive.

Disconnect the Win8.1 drive when you install onto the second drive.
Then when it's all up and running, reconnect the Win8.1 drive and use
the boot selection key on that system ( find out what it is, often
[F12] but I've seen [F8], [F9], [F10], [F11] and [ESC] used !! ) to
choose which one to boot into.